It is this practical use (and associated revenue) that makes Akin so potentially valuable.
Out of this world
NASA had been a client of Yearsley’s at Cognea, and its Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) – which makes robots to be deployed in space – became Akin’s first customer. Akin’s AI is being used in earth-based replicas of a lunar base. In time, it could be used to control the living atmosphere on a different planet. Akin is also designing companion robots, to help with tasks and the human crew’s mental wellbeing on future deep space missions.
“At NASA’s JPL we built an ambient AI manager called PAL because it’s like HAL, but it’s good,” Yearsley says. “It is pure software that looks at all the people in their habitat, and asks what are the resources? What are their jobs? How are they going? Do they like each other? How can I help?
“Then we built a couple of physical robotic embodiments as well, which are manufactured in Australia. They provide complex task support and companionship, which we then started transferring to other areas like disability.”
Liesl Yearsley works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California. Inset: Robotic technology by Akin.
Akin got its early funding from AI-focused Silicon Valley venture capital firm Comet Labs as well as Westpac’s VC fund Reinventure Group. But it is the next funding that could see its valuation, and Yearsley’s wealth, go through the roof.
VC excitement
Yearsley says the VCs she has spoken to in Silicon Valley are in a whirl of activity as AI companies of various repute catch a ride on the ChatGPT train. According to US-based Pitchbook, an eye-watering $US1.7 billion ($2.5 billion) was invested in generative AI start-ups across 46 deals in the first quarter of 2023, with an additional $US10.68 billion worth of deals announced, but which have not yet completed.
Yearsley points to San Francisco-based ChatGPT rival Anthropic as an example of a company with which Akin could be compared. It has raised mountains of VC money, at a valuation of $US4.1 billion.
As to the big question of the day – whether AI development needs to stop for the protection of humanity – Yearsley believes the runaway progress cannot be curbed. What is important, she says, is that AI is given values we can live with.
“If you were building internal combustion engines 150 years ago and someone said ‘stop doing it’, then someone else would have done it, and that country or company would own the economy and crush you.
“But if the same day that that combustion engine came up, the government had the foresight to go, ‘well, what if we imposed a carbon tax?’ then things could have evolved very differently.
“We are at that stage now with AI . . . There is a cost to this, someone’s making a profit, so that cost needs to be properly carried and controlled. You can’t just make the dollar and not wear the carry-on cost to our ecosystem and society.”
